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Carl Hopkinson And why don't you learn to be a gentleman when discussing legitimate differences of opinion, you fascist-leaning troglodyte. Don't you have a fist-pounding meeting of... – Pretty Girls Making Ugly Faces

Life

1. No, he/she isn’t the only one. There are millions of people. Go meet more. Those aren’t your only friends. They are just your only friends NOW. You can make more, and often better, friends.

2. Molehills, not mountains. Keep things in perspective. You might feel shitty because you fucked up about this one thing. In a year you probably won’t remember it and it will be inconsequential unless you keep chastising yourself for it. Everyone else is too busy being paranoid about themselves to have to remember every stupid thing you did.

3. Chastising yourself and beating yourself up about things is useless. Take responsibility, do what you can to fix it, and then accept that you have done all you can. You can’t fix every mistake. Learn from them. Repeat them until you learn from them if you have to. So you know you get annoying, violent, or depressed when you drink? Don’t drink. You know you get an upset stomach when you drink milk and eat a burrito… don’t do it.

4. Don’t let pride/fear get in the way. So what if those people who you don’t know will make fun of you for riding your bike as you try to get healthy? You aren’t here to please other people unless they mean something to you. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be proud of who you are but that you shouldn’t let pride dictate what you can and can’t do because you are afraid of what people will think of you if you make a mistake, fail, or look like a fool while trying.

5. People’s opinions are just that. They really don’t matter. Opinions are like lies. The only power they have is if someone believes them to be fact. As they aren’t fact and just some other person’s point of view you can discard most of them. That doesn’t mean don’t listen to advice from loved ones… but it does mean that it is just advice and their opinion.

6. Get moving. Every day you sit there wallowing in self doubt, fear, and sadness you only make it worse. Your journey is still going and it doesn’t pause for anyone. Go out there and fuck up. Get out there and make a fool of yourself. Put your neck on the line and fail. At least you are doing something and that alone is something to be proud of.

7. Ask for help. This one goes in line with pride. There is nothing wrong in asking for help. If you don’t know something then ask. If you can’t do something alone then ask for help. It’s OK. Anyone who judges you for it isn’t worth the time (and that is just their opinion anyway).

8. Form good habits. Wake up early even if you have nothing to do and get dressed. Get out of those smelly pjs. Respect yourself and have some pride in what you look and smell like. Eat healthy. Learn to feed yourself properly. Help people if you can. Focus on solutions not problems. Do your best all the time. All that sort of stuff. Will, commitment, and discipline will get you places.

9. Don’t say “I can’t” until you at least tried, gave it your honest to god best shot, and failed… a few times. Lots of things are hard as hell to do right. Stop telling yourself you can’t do it just because you are too scared to try and fail.

10. Be patient with yourself. No one was born knowing everything they know now and things they know how to do now. No one knows everything. Everyone, every single person, fucks up. So will you, so give yourself a little breathing room.

Bonus: Last but not least…

Learn to forgive. Yourself as much as others. People will do you wrong sometimes. Shit happens. Forgive them if you can so you can move on. Holding on to all that weight just slows you down.

Unfortunately, just before you take your first step on the righteous journey to pursue your dreams, people around you, even the ones who deeply care for you, will give you awful advice. It’s not because they have evil intentions. It’s because they don’t understand the big picture—what your dreams, passions, and life goals mean to you. They don’t understand that, to you, the reward is worth the risk.

So they try to protect you by shielding you from the possibility of failure, which, in effect, also shields you from the possibility of making your dreams a reality.

As our friend Steve Jobs says:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Here are ten ill-advised tips (lies) people will likely tell you when you decide to pursue your dreams and the reasons why they are dreadfully mistaken:

1. You can follow your dreams someday, but right now you need to buckle down and be responsible.

Someday? When is ”someday”? “Someday” is not a day at all. It’s a foggy generalization of a time that will likely never come. Today is the only day guaranteed to you. Today is the only day you can begin to make a difference in your life. And pursuing your dreams is what life is all about. So don’t be irresponsible. Don’t wait until “someday.” Make today the first day of the rest of your new life.

1. Settle disputes peacefully

When you feel anger, avoid saying or yelling words you can’t take back, instead have a planned agreement that you each will back away.

2. Spend quality time Together

Make time for each other. With busy schedules we often forget to relax and enjoy others. Two people can be right next to each other, yet miles apart. Ignoring someone, often hurts more than angry words! Carve out special time for just the two of you once a week.

3. Appreciate and Help each other Grow

Having an open appreciation for your significant other leads to a productive, fulfilling and peaceful union. Cheer for their victories. Celebrate their accomplishments, and encourage their goals and ambitions! Challenge them to be the best they can be.

4. Live with Integrity

Trust in each other and know you haven’t been used or taken advantage of, it creates inner peace and security. Lies fester, but the truth heals or prevents trouble. Live daily with fairness, integrity and reliability.

5. Be Loyal and Devoted

True love and real friendship aren’t about being inseparable. Love is about two people being true to each other even when they are separated. When it comes to relationships, remaining faithful is never an option, but a priority. Loyalty is everything.

6. Love and Respect each Other as Individuals

Our first and last love is self-love. Don’t rely on your significant other, or anyone else, for your happiness and self worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can’t love and respect yourself, no one else will be able to either.

7. Lend Support during the Good Times and Bad

Be there through the good, bad, happy, and sad times too. Trust that you can count on each other, and be available not only when it’s convenient, but when it’s needed most.

8. Understand: Every Relationship is Different

Don’t compare your relationship to anyone else’s, especially that random couple whose relationship seems perfect. Every couple makes their own love rules, love agreements, and love habits. Just focus on you two, and make your relationship the best it can be!

9. An Emphasis on Communication and Listening

No one is a mind-reader so your partner won’t be able to figure out how you’re feeling. Be specific and clear with yourself on what you want and make an effort to discover what your partner’s needs are.

10. Turn Negatives into Positives

Problems in a relationship can be broken down into numbers. If you’re both honest with each other and within yourselves, logically look at the negatives and calmly list them. Work together as a team to tackle each negative, one by one.

11. Work on Thoughtfulness Every Day

People who are in successful relationships nourish their partnerships regularly. They don’t set their life on cruise control. Ask yourself, “What can I do today to make my partner’s life better?” Little bits of effort every day will accumulate over time and make a big difference.

12. Realistic Expectations

Real relationships aren’t what you see in the movies. They happen because each person values the other and are willing to make an investment of time into the partnership.
They understand, not all days are passionate and romantic.. rough spots will require good communication.

1. Being in a happy relationship means that you will never again feel_______ (insert depressed, lonely, scared, insecure, etc).
As an awkward girl who spent most of high school and college dateless, I often thought that being in a relationship would somehow “solve” all my problems. Thinking that being in a relationship will instantly solve your problems is a pipe dream. A happy, loving relationship is one life’s greatest joys, but it can’t solve the things you don’t like about yourself. You have to do that, with work.

2. Being good at schoolmeans you’ll be good at work. Achieving academically by no means guarantees workplace success. I’ve had to swallow a big humility pill as I watch former fellow students who struggled through classes I breezed through now massively outpace me in career achievement. Being a great student does not mean you’ll be great in the workplace. And that’s OK.

3. Physical fitness doesn’t matter, being thin matters. Being skinny does not matter. Being physically fit really, really matters. Eat lots of healthful food and get tons of exercise. Ignore the scale.

4. Everyone has to like you. Inevitably, someone will always dislike you. I wish I had figured this out a lot earlier and stopped trying so hard and worrying so much about it. I could have used all that time and put it to doing something far more fun and interesting, like learning a new language or playing the piano. Heck, watching Project Runway reruns would have been a better use of time.

5. Quit something when you fail. Just because you fail at something does not mean you should quit, especially if it gives you joy or stretches you mentally. Everyone fails. Keep trying.

6. Getting rejected is the worst thing that can happen. It really isn’t. In fact, it can be a really good thing. Whether it was getting dumped or getting fired from a job, looking back I can honestly say that rejection taught me far more and had long-lasting positive benefits beyond whatever successes I’ve had. Getting fired from my first office job made me realize that no one in the working world cared about my kickass 100 page honors thesis on Jonathan Franzen and that I better learn some real workplace skills, fast. Getting fired and waking up the next day as usual made me realize that failure isn’t the end of the world. Getting dumped taught me the difference between a good and a bad relationship, something I already knew inside but refused to accept until the bad relationship was over. Getting dumped made me a better person for the amazing man I get to be married to today. When rejection teaches you something new and positive, then that’s actually a pretty great thing.

7. Talking is more powerful than listening. I’m a lot quieter and more introverted these days and happier being so. Not all silence needs to be filled.

8. Changing your location will make you happy. I’ve believed this and I see many people in their early 20s who believe the same so they travel, take off to a new city or get a nicer place. Happiness is more internal than anything.

9. Friends from childhood will be your lifelong friends. 20s are a decade for personal transformation and you’ll naturally grow apart from people. It’s not because either of you are bad people, but because you just outgrew each other.

10. You can always get healthy later. When you’re younger, other parts of your body are stronger and can compensate for poor health habits, i.e. junk food, soda, alcohol, smoking, etc. You think it’ll always be easy to get back into shape or become healthy. But in reality, health habits take time to build there’s never a better time to start than now.

11. You will magically stumble upon “the one.” Many people put more effort into they type of car they want to buy than their marriage partner. Most people don’t date enough to learn their true preferences in dating. They cling onto whatever comes through the front door and leave it to fate. Be more proactive in finding someone.

12. Having enough technical skills will get you hired. This is just one small part of the puzzle. Dealing with problems is the problem in most work situations. Having social skills, navigating politics, knowing who to ask for what, and being able to see the big picture are invaluable no matter what you do.

13. You have to achieve greatness to be happy. There’s a lot of sacrifice in becoming great and it usually doesn’t bode well for other areas of your life.

Hey, what’s up, I’m brandon. A few months ago I had to break up with a lady, as often happens with dudes and ladies, but I can’t say I was particularly happy to do it. It left a very specific person-sized hole in my life, and I felt unmoored, for quite a while. I was adrift! I was a slug. I was apathy personified. I was also, it may not surprise you to learn, relatively unhappy at times. I thought to myself. “Self,” I thought, “Self, you are ridiculous.” And it was true that I was. To celebrate my new-found understanding and to figure out a way to retain a bit of perspective on my slothful drifting, I started to write some little vignettes about the dumb sadness tricks my brain perpetrated on me during this time. Dami Lee, having the ability to draw, and also possessing a firm understanding of ladies (having been one her whole life), seemed like the perfect choice to turn these dumb things into tiny comic strips for your reading bemusement. And so it is. We will release one of these every Monday, and will stop when the well has run dry. If you enjoy this stuff, you can follow us on things, like twitter: twitter.com/necrosofty and twitter.com/dami_lee or these places: facebook.com/asperusual. Okay have a nice forever bye bye.

#1. You paid the bills this month, and maybe even had extra to spend on non-necessities. It doesn’t matter how much you belabored the checks as they went out, the point is that they did, and you figured it out regardless.

#2. You question yourself. You doubt your life. You feel miserable some days. This means you’re still open to growth. This means you can be objective and self-aware. The best people go home at the end of the day and think: “or… maybe there’s another way.”

#3. You have a job. For however many hours, at whatever rate, you are earning money that helps you eat something, sleep on something, wear something every day. It’s not failure if it doesn’t look the way you thought it would – you’re valuing your independence and taking responsibility for yourself.

#4. You have time to do something you enjoy. Even if “what you enjoy” is sitting on the couch and ordering dinner and watching Netflix.

#5. You are not worried about where your next meal is coming from. There’s food in the fridge or pantry, and you have enough to actually pick and choose what you want to eat.

#6. You can eat because you enjoy it. It’s not a matter of sheer survival.

#7. You have one or two truly close friends. People worry about the quantity but eventually tend to realize the number of people you can claim to be in your tribe has no bearing on how much you feel intimacy, acceptance, community, or joy. At the end of the day, all we really want are a few close people who know us (and love us) no matter what.

#8. You could afford a subway ride, cup of coffee, or the gas in your car this morning. The smallest conveniences (and oftentimes, necessities) are not variables for you.

#9. You’re not the same person you were a year ago. You’re learning, and evolving, and can identify the ways in which you’ve changed for better and worse.

#10. You have the time and means to do things beyond the bare minimum.You’ve maybe been to a concert in the last few years, you buy books for yourself, you could take a day trip to a neighboring city if you wanted – you don’t have to work all hours of the day to survive.

#11. You have a selection of clothing at your disposal. You aren’t worried about having a hat or gloves in a blizzard, you have cool clothes for the summer and something to wear to a wedding. You not only can shield and decorate your body, but can do so appropriately for a variety of circumstances.

#12. You can sense what isn’tright in your life. The first and most crucial step is simply being aware. Being able to communicate to yourself: “something is not right, even though I am not yet sure what would feel better.”

#13. If you could talk to your younger self, you would be able so say: “We did it, we made it out, we survived that terrible thing.” So often people carry their past traumas into their present lives, and if you want any proof that we carry who we were in who we are, all you need to do is see how you respond to your inner child hearing, you’re going to be okay, from the person they became.

#14. You have a space of your own. It doesn’t even have to be a home or apartment (but that’s great if it is). All you need is a room, a corner, a desk, where you can create or rest at your discretion; where you govern who gets to be part of your weird little world, and to what capacity. It’s one of the few controls we can actually exert.

#15. You’ve lost relationships. More important than the fact that you’ve simply had them in the first place is that you or your former partner chose not to settle. You opened yourself to the possibility of something else being out there.

#16. You’re interested in something. Whether it’s now how to live a happier life, maintain better relationships, reading or movies or sex or society or the axis on which the world spins, something intrigues you to explore it.

#17. You know how to take care of yourself. You know how many hours of sleep you need to feel okay the next day, who to turn to when you’re heartbroken, what you have fun doing, what to do when you don’t feel well, etc.

#18. You’re working toward a goal. Even if you’re exhausted and it feels miles away, you have a dream for yourself, however vague and malleable.

#19. But you’re not uncompromisingly set on anything for your future. Some of the happiest and best adjusted people are the ones who can make any situation an ideal, who are too immersed in the moment to intricately plan and decidedly commit to any one specific outcome.

#20. You’ve been through some crap. You can look at challenges you currently face and compare them to ones you thought you’d never get over. You can reassure yourself through your own experience. Life did not get easier, you got smarter.